Richie I have followed your thread from the outset and found it very interesting and displayed a genuine and heart felt interest in the history of the 8th Army etc. Two of the newspapers have my fathers(not my grandfather- Ian's grandfather) name written across the top in his own handwriting so they have a direct association to him. The third with the tank picture does not. Ian will get one of the two with the other going to my other son Darren who was in the Green Howards. It will please me for you to have the third, my reward for the work you have done on 'richies little tank and K7' restoring important pieces of history . Please keep an old man happy.
My father spoke very little about the war until his last few months when he was fading away slowly. He had numerous marks on his back that looked like healed up bullet holes and he would never say what happened. After he died I got his army service record and found reference to an accident in north africa when something blew up and he got the brunt of the shrapnel in his back. The one thing he did say once and only very briefly was the image he had carried around for decades was of the bodies of the enemy piled up with petrol poured on and set alight.
After the war he served as a senior civil servant in Hanover Germany from 1945 to 1952 on the control commission running Germany. I lived there just after I was born in 1947 until 1952. My brother was born in Germany which caused a little problem when he applied to join the Royal Marines in 1967 but he got in and served for a long time getting the Queens award for Brave Conduct.(presented to him by the Duke of Edinburgh)
Please PM me with your address and I will send you the newspaper. I think its fitting it goes with Richies Little Tank. BTW It will make my life easier, I make good working models but have not mastered how to do scans
BTW re tank models. About 20 years ago a friend of mine in the model boat club who was also a skilled model engineer made a large model of a tiger tank. He made every part including all the track parts. He was however not skilled in getting things to work well and it was handed to me to get it to work. I made it run forward/backwards, the gun turn and fire. The tricky bit was getting the tank to recoil correctly when the gun was fired but I got there. My friend died and I believe the model is now in the Tank Museum. It was never painted.
